The following correspondence between Brian Alsup and Kiese Laymon took place during the week of August 31, 2015. As John Callahan once wrote of the decades-long exchange between Albert Murray and Ralph Ellison in Trading Twelves: The Selected Letters, it is “the bounty of a rare and spontaneous friendship in which each taps into the deepest experience of each other.” Together, Alsup and Laymon reckon with black love, liberation, and shouldering the weight of white terror in America.

As part of an ongoing project, we've written letters to American death row prisoners scheduled for execution this year. We asked them about their lives in prison, their daily routines, and their thoughts on the American justice system. Today, a response from Douglas Feldman, a death row prisoner in Texas.

Earlier this year, we sent letters to all U.S. death row inmates with execution dates in the near future. Today, we hear from Harry Mitts, who was convicted of murdering two men, including a police sergeant, in 1994. Mitts is scheduled to be executed September 25, 2013.

Today, Vanity Fair published several excerpts from the romantic correspondence of a young Barack Obama, displaying a penetrating mind and an impressive command of language on the part of the future president, who had just transferred from Occidental College to Columbia. His letters, as biographer David Maraniss writes, "wove [their] way though literature, politics, and personal philosophy"; our own Maureen O'Connor notes that they "reference T.S. Eliot, 'bourgeois liberalism,' and Jacques Derrida."

Yesterday's story on our weekend at the Arkansas headquarters of The Knights Part of the KKK brought in a variety of correspondence. Below, the most vibrant.

Amy Boatwright is one of the owners of Secret Room Events, "Hollywood's Most Exclusive Product Placement Company." She had minor acting roles on films such as "The Third Wheel" and "Even Money." She's run celebrity gifting suites in conjunction with the Academy Awards for years. She is upset with us.

It's hard out there for job-seekers, we know. How can you stand out in a crowd? How do you impress an employer? What's the best way to communicate your skills and your passions? Here's our advice: don't write a cover letter that ends with the words "thanks cunt!"

Dear Michelle Obama, I think your husband should legalize immigration. Please put a statue of me in Echo Park.

Hey look, Fox News has set up a tipline you can email to inform them about acts of voter fraud. Could this have anything to do with conservatives' thinly-veiled attempts at voter intimidation in minority-heavy precincts?

When Reddit user freshcashews turned 13, his father sent out letters to important figures inviting them to the Bar Mitzvah. Forty-one of them wrote back—including then-Senator Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Queen of England, and the President of Nigeria.

Lindsay Lohan is getting 250 letters a day in jail. You've been using your postcards!

Eight federal buildings in Washington, Idaho and Utah received envelopes containing non-hazardous white mystery powder yesterday.

Lovable Hurt Locker producer Nicholas Chartier, whose trash-talk email about Avatar got him banned from the Oscars, called a recent correspondent a "moron" and a "thief" in another imprudent missive. If only there was a way to not press "send."

Here is a good, interesting story in the Washington Post about the people who write to Barack Obama, why they write, and the process by which some of their letters reach the president. It is heart-warming and kinda sad, too.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer has blown the lid off the mystery of prolific letter-to-the-editor writer "Ellie Light" : She's Barbara Brooks, a California nurse. Except now Brooks says it's really her husband, Winston Steward (pictured). These people are weird.

Have you been wondering what "Lanny F." has been up to since he starred in the infomercial for the butt-odor-removing product Aspray? Fortunately for you, he has emailed us.

It's a weekday, and that means the Hipster Grifter is back, with some more sexxxy jail correspondence! Besides her usual ho-hum tales of imaginary lesbian jail sex, Kari reveals her wacky idea for a reality TV show. Snag her now!

Incarcerated Utahan Kari Ferrell, your Hipster Grifter, has mailed another missive to her pen pal, Bucky Turco, and, through him, to you, her fans. She'll be out of jail in a flash. Then, back to NYC, and onto (more) TV!

Because we strive for balance in strident denunciations, here is an email from some Tucker Max fan:

Recently sentenced Utah convict Kari Ferrell has sent another jailhouse letter to her pen pal, Animal NY's Bucky Turco. Below, a random sample. Her prose style should be familiar by now.